(Editor's note: Here's an article that should be read by anyone entertaining the thought of enlisting in the US armed forces.)

He kept the secret for 30 years. The former Navy skipper told no one about the classified tests of Project Shad, how the Marine jets came screaming out of the night off a remote Pacific atoll, spraying a 100-mile-long aerosol cloud over his five tugboats. Then Jack Alderson's men started getting sick.

"Some of the guys tried to go to the Pentagon or the American
Legion and said, `I did biological warfare testing.' They basically threw them out, told them they were crazy," said Alderson, many of whose former crew complain of chronic respiratory problems. "They told them, `We didn't do things like that.'"

But now, after seven years of inquiries from veterans, Congress and the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Pentagon has confirmed that thousands of sailors were present during a decadelong series of classified tests to determine the vulnerability of U.